Locke and Limits on Land Ownership

Abstract

Revisionist history often upsets our ordinary ideas of right and wrong. We once believed, for example, that the Europeans who discovered and settled the new world were courageous in bringing civilization and its benefits to a new continent. It is now more common to recognize that some, perhaps many, of these explorers and settlers were tyrants who stole land from native Americans and often violently destroyed indigenous cultures. Just as scholars have provided a revisionist account ofthe history of settling America, in this essay I provide a revisionist analysis of Locke's theory of property rights. After providing a brief overview of his theory, I explain that Locke has traditionally been hailed as the defender of unlimited capitalistic appropriation of property, including land. Arguing that both the traditional capitalist-bourgeois and the Marxist-socialist interpretations of Locke have serious shortcomings,1 I opt for a middle ground between these two extremes and suggest that, although Locke ought not be interpreted in any doctrinaire, ideological way, his account may be ambiguous enough to support restriction of certain property rights in natural resources like land. If so, then Locke's writings may provide a philosophical basis in traditional political theory for a welfare-state capitalism that includes land-use planning. My arguments for the plausibility of this revisionist account of Locke attempt to avoid (what Quine called) nothing but explanations. Such simplistic explanations focus only on one aspect of complex views, and they may be responsible for whatever bias is exhibited in both the capitalist and the socialist views of Locke. Appropriating neither of these interpretations, I believe that Locke's own words provide a basis for limiting or denying property rights in land and other natural resources. My beliefrests on at least fourtheses,

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